


Cupid's Got A Gun

by geckoholic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:39:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuck-or-die, set in early S4. But they've been fucking for years, so that shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong. Ever since hell, Dean's in no hurry to get that show on the road again. They've tried, and it doesn't work, too many bad memories from what's been done to him downstairs. A case that involves a cursed cross and a vengeful witch takes that choice away from them, though...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cupid's Got A Gun

**Author's Note:**

> Originally based on [this prompt](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/393050.html?thread=4826970#t4826970) from a comment fic meme on Hoodie Time, only, you know, minus the comfort and the healing cock. Other than that: I haven't been sure about this fic before I even started writing, and I'm still somewhat freaked out by the fact that I did write it. But some fics just won't stop poking at you until they're out, and this is one of them. Also, I get that the subject matter might be disturing to some and arousing to others; if you fall into the the latter category, don't le me stop you, but please keep the fact to yourself. I don't want to see any comments about this being "hot". It's not supposed to be. 
> 
> Beta'd by seeing_ghosts (who also cheerled me through finishing in the first place), salty_catfish, maypoles and amor_remanet helped me beat this thing into, uh, something of a better shape? XD IDEK. Thanks, ladies, and of course all remaining mistakes are mine. ♥ 
> 
> Title is from "Until We Bleed" by Kleerup ft. Lykke Li.

 

 

 

**PREFACE**

It's dark out, and it's raining. She's cold, and she hears the wolves howl, but her steps are sure and unhurried. The animals won't hurt her, wouldn't dare, and she knows the way by heart.

She walked down this path so many times.

All those years, everything that happened in between, and now it's finally time to pay them back in kind. Make them feel what she felt, the fear and the shame, helpless and small and left alone by everyone. By God, most of all.

The package she's holding is heavy, and she has to switch it from her left arm to her right. It took her awhile to find the right thing, but this, yes, this is it. They won't be able to resist this gift.

Not long now and she'll be there, she tells herself. She's exhausted and tired and wants to lie down, leave this plane behind, but she won't give in until she does this one, last thing.

When she sees the steeple in the distance, she smiles. She has been waiting for so many years, and she won't live long enough to see any of it happen, but knowing they'll suffer like she did is enough to give her peace.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The one good thing about being brought back to life by an angel and dropped right in the middle of a beginning apocalypse is that it doesn't leave much time to stop and think. That suits Dean just fine, because thinking about anything – specifically hell – isn't very high on his to-do list anyway; the memories that come crashing back every time he closes his eyes are more than enough. He's not stupid, knows that all the shit he's been through down there is bound to catch up with him sooner or later. But ignorance is bliss and bliss isn't something Dean gets much of, so he avoids thinking about it altogether.

He gets an impression of just how much has changed for him the first night him and Sam spend on their own, in a motel, together. 

Sam's pressed to his back, his breath hot and warm on Dean's neck, one arm slung around his middle. They're not doing much of anything, haven't fooled around, and Dean's half-asleep when Sam begins to move behind him, babbling stuff like, "missed you," and, "good to have you back," and, "can't wait to feel you." His half-hard cock digs into the small of Dean's back, his hand glides down his stomach, dips below the waistline of his boxers, and it brings Dean fully back to awareness in an instant. Panic falls over him like a tidal wave – too much too fast, and he's not sure what's worse: Sam's growing hard-on, the intimate touch, or the prospect of an actual fuck. 

And he can't do that. Not any of it. Sam's still oblivious, starts to rub his palm over Dean's cock, up and down with light pressure, just the way Dean used to like, and Dean freezes; he needs this to _stop_. 

"Sam," he presses out, means to say more, explain, plead, anything to make Sam back away and now, but nothing else comes. His mind is blank, all of his senses and attention honed in on the hand on him. Every touch sends shockwaves down his spine, and not the good kind. 

It feels like an eternity passes until Sam gets the message and moves away. He says something, but Dean doesn't pay attention; all that matters is that he's finally in command of his limbs again, can extricate himself from Sam and inch away, sit up. _Flee._

His heart goes a mile a minute, he can't draw enough air, heaves in desperate little gulps of air. He can barely keep himself from running out of the room, in the middle of the night and half-naked, shuffles backwards slowly until his knee collides with the bedpost and he stays there, gribs it tight for support, out of breath and shaky. 

Bullshiting Sam about not remembering anything about Hell gets rendered useless then and there. He's by Dean's side in an instant, touches his shoulder in what's meant to be comfort, and Dean can't help a violent flinch at the contact. 

"Don't fucking _touch me_ ," he hisses, glances at Sam, but can't hold his brother's eyes. The understanding he sees there, worry and pity and shock, makes the lie that wants to follow – in an attempt to play this down – get stuck in his throat. 

Sam takes in a breath, about to speak, but Dean cuts him off with a whispered, "don't." The last thing he needs right now is for Sam to spill some sympathetic girly crap, make him feel weak and pathetic on top of freaked out. 

Sam gets the hint and shuts up, and they sit there in awkward silence until Dean calms enough to lie back down. 

In the morning, Sam tries to bring it up, get Dean to talk. Of course he does, still a firm believer that it's possible to make things better by dragging them out in the open and poking at them. 

"Dean, about last night", he starts while they pack, trying for casual and missing by a mile, eyes flickering through the room, unsure of where to look, and that right there is Dean's cue to keep this conversation from happening. Sam's not the only one with true and tried tactics in this family, and Dean's favorite is diversion. 

"I think I'm gonna get us some breakfast," he says and heads for the door under Sam's penetrating, worried stare. "Saw a bakery yesterday, not that far. I'd be willing to go buy some of that sweet fruity shit just for you." With that, he's out the door, doesn't give Sam the chance to get a reply in. 

They don't talk about it again. 

Dean initiates their second attempt, thinks about it for days beforehand, plans ahead and tries to brace himself, and it's okay, at first.

He clings to memories of all the times they've done it before – remind himself that this is _Sam_ and Sam would never hurt him – as he strips down and positions himself on his back once he's naked. He still doesn't panic when Sam joins him, face to face, and leans down for a kiss, languid and almost innocent, no tongue and without any kind of urgency until Dean opens up for it and deepens it on his own speed.

It feels good. Dean's not surprised by it this time, keeps his eyes open to concentrate on Sam's face and his surroundings and remembering where he his. 

He gets a little adventurous then, pulls Sam's body closer to his own, and that's when things start to go south. Sam's hard-on digs into his hip, and although he doesn't do anything with it, even tries to angle it away from Dean's body as best as he can, Dean can't help but feel threatened. 

"Let's slow down, yeah?" he says. 

Sam eyes him warily, and for a moment Dean thinks Sam will be the one who calls the whole thing off, too afraid they're making things worse instead of better. But then he nods, smiles sadly at Dean and leans back onto the covers next to him. "What would you like me to do? What'd, uh, be okay?"

Dean honestly doesn't know, shrugs at Sam in response and looks up at him, embarrassed, and Sam starts to touch him with almost ridiculous care, not anywhere near his crotch. Every move he makes happens in Dean's direct line of sight, slowly, so Dean can keep track of it. He lets his hand rest on Dean's chest, moves it down his stomach, up his flanks.

And it's fine, until Sam's elbow accidentally brushes by Dean's still flacid cock. Dean scoots back on the bed instantly, brings just enough distance between them that their bodies don't touch, and runs a hand down his face. He can practically feel how something deep inside of him shuts down, observe as the part of him that'd hoped this could somehow be fixed, that he could get this back, throws the towel. Just the thought of having to try again suddenly makes him want to retch.

Sam's whispering nonsense at him, most likely meant to soothe, but all it does is make Dean feel humiliated. He climbs out of bed and spends the rest of the night awake in the car, listens to his favorite tapes while he tries hard not to fall asleep.

 

***

 

The midwest in late summer is one of Sam's favorite things. Dean's not much of a summer person – his skin's sensitive to sunburns and he complains about the heat a lot – but Sam revels in it. Endless fields with wheat waving in the wind, crickets chirping somewhere, lakes in the middle of nowhere that invite you to go skinny-dipping... Yeah. He loves it.

This year, though, it's all ruined. Everything is. He's pretty sure Dean has chosen the case in the rural south of Wisconsin to cheer him up and and he tries to be cheerful about it, but it doesn't work. His heart's not in it, and there's so much wrong with the fact that _Dean's_ trying to make _him_ feel better in the first place, when Sam fails so hard to do the same thing in return.

And Dean's still insisting that everything's fine, anyway. He swears up and down he doesn't remember much. Not that Sam believes him – with the nightmares and the jumpiness and, last but not least, Dean's reaction to the attempts at a revival of their sex life delivering evidence to the contrary – but it's been a few weeks now, and he's stopped trying to make him talk.

The case Dean sniffed out is in Delafield, a small town about 30 miles west of Milwaukee. It prides itself on its varied offer of restaurants and specialty shops, and after he's grabbed a flyer from the pamphlet rack in the lobby of their motel, Dean declares that he'll pick them a new one to eat at for every day that they're here. It's a front, a diversion, something Dean does because he'd have enjoyed it before. He's not eating much, these days, on good days he starts frowning at his spoon halfway through. On bad days, he pushes the food around on the plate and talks a lot, sneaks glances as if to check if it's working, if he's pretending well enough to distract Sam from the fact that he hasn't had a bite.

They both do a lot of pretending, these days.

But either way, Dean's first choice falls on a brewpub that's decidedly more upscale than their usual standard. The bartenders and waiters all wear the same t-shirt, like a uniform, there are benches with well-tended-to leather seats and wooden tables instead of plastic and vinyl. It's busy when they get there, loud and crowded, and they retreat to a table in the corner to discuss what they know about the case so far.

Sam's stomach is rumbling. He's been hungry since they hit town and the smell of roasted potatoes and vegetables and soups and various kinds of fried meat that waver over from the kitchen and nearby tables has his mouth watering. But Dean pulls out the folder with their research and doesn't seem at all inclined to order yet, so Sam silently waves the waiter away when he approaches them.

“Okay, so,” Dean starts. “We got a dude with a somewhat shady collection of art and artifacts dropping dead by unknown causes. The coroner wrote in his report that his heart just stopped working, without any signs for a heart attack, related disease, or outside influence, even though the dude was barely in his forties. That means we have jack shit to go on, basically.”

“We can at least cross some things off the list? No mess, which disqualifies a lot of things. No ghost, probably, because they tend to cause heart attacks one way or another if they don't use anything else for the killings,” Sam says and shrugs his shoulders.

Dean briefly glares at Sam, then averts his eyes to stare at the folder as if more hints might appear if he just looks at it long enough. “Yeah, real helpful, to know what we're not hunting.”

“Hey, I'm trying. Given his collecting passion our best bet might be a cursed object, though we can't do much more about it before we checked out the scene and talked to the widow and that assistant of his.”

“Yeah,” Dean allows. He finally picks up the menu, frowns at it, puts it back down and pushes his chair back to get up. “I gotta hit the head. You wanna go and pick something for both of us while I'm gone?”

That means today is one of those days where Dean's gonna rearrange his food instead of eating it, but Sam nods anyway. “Sure, okay.”

By the time Dean comes back, their plates have already arrived. Sam tries hard not think about what it was that took him so long, but the pale color of his face and the slight sour smell he's giving off make for pretty obnoxious hints.

 

***

 

Most days, Dean wakes up way before Sam and stays where he is until Sam joins the land of the living as well. Today's no exception. He wouldn't even bother lying down in the first place if it wasn't for Sam's insistence that hey, no, they're going to bed _together_. Dean figures it's the least he can do since sex is out of question, to let Sam have this – never mind the fact that Sam's a goddamn spider monkey and more often than not Dean comes to encased in and smothered by his brother. But it's fine. Once he's over the initial shock of it – the sensation of entrapment – and realizes where he is, it even feels good. To be able to breath in Sam's scent first thing in the morning holds some comfort, calms him down after his brain's nightly detour to Hell.

Who would've ever thought the day might come when Dean'd be more okay with intimacy than a good, old-fashioned fuck?

Of course, intimacy may not be quite the right word in this case. There's more physical closeness than ever before, a lot of things that veer dangerously close to regular couple stuff, but apart from that the rift between them couldn't be more obvious. Dean lies, well aware that Sam doesn't buy it for a second. Sam lies, hides something big from him, although he seems to believe that he's got Dean fooled; Dean can't quite figure out what's going on yet, but he knows _something_ 's off.

Both of them have been scattered into pieces, and they're both still busy trying to puzzle the other one back together.

Sam stirs, yawns, and stretches out his arms. He almost pokes Dean in the eye, a rather efficient way to break off any train of thought, and Dean shoves him in retaliation. Naturally, Sam shoves back and leans down for a kiss, trapping Dean beneath himself, and yeah, that's that, there's a line being crossed. Being held down and cornered like this, it carries too many bad implications for him to stand.

Dean retreats, mumbles something that he intends to be, “move off, Gigantor, gonna grab a shower,” but it comes out rushed and jumbled and he's not sure he managed to get the message across. Nevertheless, as soon as he closed the bathroom door behind himself Dean regrets airing his intentions at Sam, not so sure anymore that getting naked is what he wants to do right now, but he's said it and so he follows through. He also forgot to grab new boxers in his mad dash out of bed, which doesn't strike as that much of a problem until he steps back into the room; it's not that he minds Sam's eyes on him, but Sam seems to be dead-set on not invading his space by staring: he looks anywhere but at Dean in such an obvious way that Dean's a little embarrassed for his brother's lack of stealth.

He's glad when they're both dressed and out of the room. 

When they dangle their fake badges at the dead art collector's wife, she scowls at them, excuses herself with funeral arrangements and points them to the assistant's office. Trophy wife, maybe, because she might be attractive but doesn't seem all that bothered by the recent passing of her husband.

As if to make up for that, said assistant – a plain brunette in her mid-twenties – is still streaming in tears, a full week after his death. Which, well. Might be normal, Dean supposes, if you've been on good terms with your employer. Not like he'd know.

She introduces herself as Ashley and leads them to the gallery. The house is more of a mansion, nineteenth century style, the kind that doesn't simply have floors and hallways but a west wing and a north wing, as well as a stable and a tennis court and a pool in the form of an exotic flower.

Dude sure knew how to live the good life.

"The gallery is in the back of the north wing," Ashley chatters on while she marches them down there, "and it's on par with the standards of the MOMA and the National Gallery: tempered rooms, sensors to monitor the humidity in the air, top-notch security. Nobody's getting in without our knowledge." 

If he cared about art or how it's stored, Dean would be impressed, he's sure. “What was the last piece Mr. Cramer bought?”

“An old jeweled cross, German in origin. Very rare piece with a fascinating history,” Ashley answers. “Follow me, I'll show you.”

They make their way through a long hallway with a metal door at the end, and Ashley asks them to turn away as she enters a code. The door opens with a beep and gives way to a big room, clean white walls covered in paintings and sculptures and old artifacts. She leads them to a glass case that contains a cross, about 15 inches high and 10 inches in width. It's made of gold and decorated over and over with jewels in different sizes and colors.

“May we take a picture? From the other recent purchases as well? We'll need the legal documents and provenances, too,” Sam says, and Ashley shows him around while Dean sticks with the cross. It does look sort of creepy, out of place and back-lit like that, but Dean excepted something a little more mythical, Celtic or Indianian or Mayan, maybe. A Christian cross doesn't scream cursed object, in fact it usually screams the opposite.

But whatever. Maybe it's not this one. They'll sort through the pictures later, see what they can dig up.

Sam joins up with him on their way outside, they both wait in front of her office while she gets the documents, thank her for her cooperation and leave the mansion.

Once they are outside, Sam makes a gesture with his hand to resemble the chirping of a bird. “Jeez, she's nice and enthusiastic and everything, seems to love her work, but she talks _a lot_. Nothing out of the ordinary after Mr. Cramer bought the cross, apart from some trouble sleeping, she said. I got an earful about her yoga courses and her finance, too. Thanks for leaving me hanging, by the way.”

“What?” Dean pastes on a grin. “You're the respectable one with the college education, I'd have had no idea what she's goin' on about anyway.” He sobers his expression, digs in his pockets for the car keys. “Did she mention anything useful?”

“Maybe, maybe not, but I hope so. If it's not one of the items, we're back to square one,” Sam replies as they get in the car. He throws the file Ashley gave him to the backseat. As he turns back around he smiles and leans in. Dean expects a kiss – Sam's always had a bit of a kink for stealing one of those when they're in semi-public, just out of sight – but halfway there Sam pulls back. His eyes dart to the door, the footwell, anywhere other than Dean's face, until he finally settles for staring out the window.

 

***

 

Turns out, Mr. Cramer isn't exactly a regular shopper. In the past year, he bought two modern art paintings, both less than five years old, a sculpture that was made in Paris in the Sixties by some lesser known artist whose name Sam can't even pronounce, and the cross.

Both him and Dean have been hunting for long enough to know that the obvious choice isn't always the right one, but in this case Sam's money _is_ on the old and myth-enshrouded cross.

“This crux gemmata was found in the early twentieth century in North Frisia, Germany, but is assumed to have been made in the late tenth or early eleventh century. The actual origin is unknown, but an analysis confirms the age,“ he reads from the essay the assistant wrote up about the piece, then puts it aside to go through the documents in the file. “The rest is a lot of detail on the material and the jewels, but I don't think that matters much for us. Provenances confirm that it was found in 1902 in the Wadden Sea and has been owned by numerous private collectors since then.”

Dean furrows his brow, reaches for the essay. He's been listening with half an ear, Sam can tell, bored and more than a little bit antsy. “I know crux means cross, but what's gemmata again?”

“It just means jeweled.”

“Ah, yeah, of course I didn't know _that_ ,” Dean says and rolls his eyes. “And how many previous owners has this thing burned through, exactly?”

“Wait a second.” Sam flips through the pages and counts. “Huh. Eighteen, as far as I can see?”

And at that Dean perks up like a deer-hound smelling its prey, fully focused now. “That sounds like a lot to me.”

It does. From what little knowledge he has about art and art collections, Sam knows that pieces like the cross don't circulate much. Private collectors tend to keep a jealous watch over their collections and mount their precious finds until they give up the collections for good or – more likely – die. Eighteen owners in a little more than a century makes for nothing more than an average of five or six years in the possession of the same person, and that's odd.

What follows is a lot of slow-going, detailed research into names and dates, sifting through newspaper articles and a surprisingly high amount of obituaries. They spend most of their afternoon looking into the other owners and their fates after they bought the cross, and in the end one thing is clear: the thing isn't much of a good-luck-charm.

The owner before Mr. Cramer had the cross for nearly twenty years, another collector from New York. It was sold after her – natural and entirely unmysterious – death. Before her, a rich guy from Alabama shared Mr. Cramer's fate, and so did his predecessor, who died after he'd bought it in the estate sale of a private museum where it had collected dust for a while. It continues like that; out of those eighteen names, fifteen belong to people who died shortly after the purchase.

Dean reaches for the photo of the cross Sam made and printed out, squints at it. “Okay, I think we've established that this thing's cursed in some way. But I can't see why it'd keep some people alive while being so effective at killin' everyone else? Seems like you're out of the woods if you make it for the first coupla weeks.”

“Might be time-sensitive, yeah. Or there's a trigger to the curse that those three lucky ones didn't evoke?”

“Maybe,” Dean says and puts the photo away, along with their printouts about the other victims. “But you know what? Let's take a break. There are more restaurants in my town guide, and I'm gettin' hungry.” He gets up and fumbles for the pamphlet that he'd left discarded on his bedside table yesterday. “Hm. There's a Mexican grill place that sounds good. Or do you want pizza?”

Sam shrugs. “I don't care either way. You pick.”

“Mexican, then. You can get pizza anywhere,” Dean decides.

On their way out, Dean takes hold of Sam's arm, herds him towards the wall. He leans in, so close Sam can feel his breath ghost over the side of his face as Dean exhales in slow, deliberately measured breaths; it's the sort of thing Dean does to steady himself, like an impromptu meditation ritual.

“Hey, no. You don't have to, uh, prove anything,” Sam says, tries to wiggle out from between Dean's body and the wall, but Dean presses closer.

“It's okay. Can you just... Not worry all the time? I'm not fragile or something.” He smiles, but Sam can see he's nervous underneath; determined and not about to back out, but not all that comfortable in his own skin either. “This morning was, say, a glitch. Things got too heated too fast. But we don't have to make a big deal of it."

No, if it was for Dean, they'd never make a big deal of anything. They'd never talk, they'd go on pretending and ignoring and pushing things away until they explode with it. That's been his modus operandi before Hell. It wasn't healthy then, and Sam's sure it's even more destructive now. He feels himself get frustrated; powerless, like he did when Dean died right in front of him. It's entwined now, weakness and frustration and anger, and he doesn't know if that's a connection forced by grief or if it's always been there; instilled in him, waiting for a reason to take over and make him short-circuit. That's why he started listening to Ruby, because doing something, anything – no matter how wrong it felt and how ill-advised it might've been – was easier than doing nothing at all.

Dean's staring at him, like he can peek inside his head and tries to make sense of what he sees there. Sam wants to say something, opens his mouth to do so while he still fumbles for words, but Dean shuts him up by kissing him. It starts out slow and tentative but it grows deeper, and by the time Dean pulls back and wipes a hand across his mouth, Sam has lost the ability to form a coherent thought.

“See? It's okay. Don't chicken out on me for no good reason. We can still have this,” Dean says, brushes a finger over Sam's split-slick, kiss-swollen lips, and then declares the moment to be over by jabbing Sam in the ribs. “C'mon, off we go. I'm starving.”

 

***

 

After dinner, they set out to find out more about the cross. It's the needle-in-a-haystack kind of task; there are plenty of jeweled crosses, and none of them resemble the deadly one they're in need of information about.

The thing with cursed objects is that, technically, it's not necessary to know what curse has been spoken. Whatever it is, the strategy is almost always the same: secure the object, destroy it if possible, put it away safely if not, and the job's done.

In practice, though, it's reckless to run into such a hunt without knowing what's behind it. Too easy to trigger the curse without meaning to, and if that happens, it's better to know a way to resolve it beforehand.

In the end, they saddle Bobby with the research into the cross; the internet doesn't lead them anywhere this time, and he's the one with the notebook full of contacts and the living room full of books. He complains about it – and their _lazy, inept asses_ – but he promises to look into it and gives them the address of someone who might be able to come up with a large enough curse box on the fly and lives half a day's drive from Delafield.

They get going before dawn the next morning. Dean figures that, if he's awake, they might just as well get an early start, and Sam falls back asleep in the passenger seat before they're out of town.

Out there on the road, the world slowly coming to life around him and Sam snoring softly at the other side of the car, it feels like nothing's changed. This is what their life looked like before Stanford, afterwards until Dean made the deal, and still during his last year.

He can almost forget everything that came after, like this, for a short time. Hell, angels and seals, the rift between Sam and him. As the sun rises and the day gets warmer, Sam comes awake slowly, and Dean welcomes him with a good-natured squeeze to the thigh. He leaves his hand there until they stop for breakfast at a tiny gas-station-plus-diner in the middle of nowhere, and he can see Sam smile in the corner of his eye. For a while there, he almost feels good.

It's a stolen time-out, though. They switch when they're back on the road, and Dean falls asleep just to wake from the worst nightmare he's had in awhile. He doesn't wake up on his own, either; Sam shakes him to awareness, parked by the side of the road. Freaked out, he roams a hand over Dean's arm, but draws it back when Dean shudders violently at the touch and pulls back as if he's been singed.

Under Sam's worried scrutiny, Dean clears his throat. “Just drive,” he says, voice so raspy and weak when he speaks that it makes him want to scream.

There's no answer from the driver's side, but he can feel Sam's eyes on him while they make their way further south. It gets hotter by the minute, he feels like; they have rolled down both windows, but the airstream from outside isn't much cooler than the air inside the car, and he still feels like he's being boiled alive.

They arrive at the rundown old pawn shop that Bobby gave them the address to around noon, and the woman that greets them behind the counter reminds him of Ellen in her gruffness and the no-bullshit attitude that she radiates. But she's younger, not to mention taller by a head and twice her size.

She raises an eyebrow at them when they enter, shoves the boxes of mismatched cutlery she's been sorting aside to free up space on the counter. “What can I do for you?”

“We're here to pick something up. Bobby Singer called ahead.”

“Ah,” she says, and her face contorts into something on that would look like friendly smile on everyone else but makes her look like she's sneering. “The curse box. Wait a minute, boys, be right back.”

Without waiting for an answer, she disappears into the back through a thick curtain behind the counter, comes back out a minute later with a big wooden box. Dean reaches for his wallet, but she waves a hand.

“Hunters don't pay here, honey,” she says in a tone that indicates he's a bit of a fool. “Just promise me you'll stop whatever's happening, and we're square.”

“We will. Thanks,” Dean replies and takes the box from her.

 

***

 

Dean demands the car keys back from Sam once they're outside, and not a word is said between them on the drive to Delafield. Sam can't say he minds; he wouldn't know what to say anyway.

Bobby calls them back half an hour after they arrived at their motel, says he tracked down a history professor in the know that might be able to figure out the backstory of the cross if he gets a picture and a copy of the essay. He gives them an email address and a fax number, and Sam welcomes the chance to get out of the room in search of a fax to send the essay and the documents with.

While he stands in the motel's office and waits for the pages to go through, he listens to the noises in the room – the fax, the fan out in the lobby, the muffled voice of the receptionist answering phone calls – and lets himself think about the last few weeks.

Truth is, he's getting tired of this, the up-and-downs, the mood swings, the things that are okay one second and the absolute wrong thing to do the next. It's not fair to Dean and he feels guilty for admitting it, if only to himself, but he always had a hard time bearing it when Dean was hurt or down or anything other than his usual self. It's not their default, Sam never learnt how to soothe Dean's pain the way Dean knows to do for him, and Dean never learnt to accept it if he tries.

And now he's got to accustom himself to the fact that this might be the new normal. Sam doesn't want to think that Dean's beyond help, but he's fighting shadows here. Without knowing what happened down there – and with Dean trying his damnedest to keep it that way – all he can do is stand by and watch while Dean keeps making one step forward only to have it followed by two steps back. It slowly eats him alive, how Dean tries to keep him out although it's obvious that he's hurting. All his life Sam's been trained to think in solutions and not in problems, he doesn't _do_ helpless. He can't deal with that.

He doesn't notice that the last page has gone through until the receptionist enters the room, points at the fax and asks if he's done, she's got an ordering confirmation to send, and if there's nothing more he needs can he please leave the office?

Sam nods, gathers the pages, and heads off to their room.

Back in there, he's greeted by silence and a lack of Dean. A rush of panic wants to take hold of him – not courtesy of the months without Dean, in their line of work sudden disappearances never bode well – but then he notices a handwritten note on the coffee table by the door. _Be right back_ it says, _getting snacks. We're out of beer, too._

He puts the papers away, sits down on the bed with his laptop, back leaning onto the headboard, and waits for Dean to come back.

Dean does, fifteen minutes later, carrying a six pack and a plastic bag. He puts both onto the coffee table and produces three DVD-cases from his jacket pocket. “Thought we'd take a breather, have ourselves a night off to watch movies until dawn and get shitfaced in the process?”

“Hey, sure, good thought,” Sam replies, but the words turn sour on his tongue when Dean unpacks the contents of the bag and reveals a bottle of cheap whiskey along with an assortment of potato chips and candy. It's not that he didn't notice that, given the chance, Dean votes for hard liquor instead of a beer more often now. Not something he thinks is a problem in its current incarnation – Dean's not quite at the straight-from-the-bottle stage yet and Sam hopes he'll never get there – but another thing that puts more coals under Sam's worry.

He doesn't say anything about it, though. Won't get him anywhere.

Dean looks relieved – as if he thought Sam would reject the suggestion – and randomly sticks one of the DVDs in the player. He walks over to the kitchenette while it loads to get them two glasses, back to the coffee table to pick up the snacks and the bottle – surpassing the six pack altogether – and then settles on the bed next to Sam.

His head starts to loll onto Sam's shoulder halfway through the first movie, but he instantly jerks himself back awake. The same thing happens again a few minutes later, and after the third time, Sam starts to realize that the booze-and-a-movie thing might not just be an idea Dean had for fun.

“You don't want to fall asleep,” he points out. “That's why you suggested this.”

Dean keeps his gaze sturdily on the TV screen. “Shut up and watch the fucking movie.”

The fourth time Dean drifts off, Sam bumps his shoulder to get him back to awareness. It earns him a weak smile.

Movie number two finds Dean more alert. He gives a running commentary on the stupidity of the main character – who, Sam's ready to admit that, really is all sorts of dense – and gestures so widely that he almost knocks over their second bag of chips.

Sam, on the other hand, gets more aware of how Dean is _right here_ and moving _next to him_ and how he's lost his overshirt half an hour ago because they've been drinking steadily and alcohol always makes Dean think the temperature in the room has risen a few notches, Sam knows that about him, like he used to know almost everything else there is to know about his brother. He might be getting a little adventurous here, because the next time Dean turns his way to bring another dumb move of the guy on the screen to his attention, Sam lays a hand on his jaw and stops him mid-motion. He's not so far gone yet that he does anything more than that, though, merely puts the idea out there and lets Dean decide.

Dean eyes him, swallows, and Sam watches his throat work while he makes up his mind. He worries that he's made a mistake, got too pushy, when Dean gets up from the bed, but Dean's not leaving or disappearing into the bathroom.

He switches on the light. Sam's drunken mind can't quite puzzle out what that would be good for and the question must have been clear in his expression, because Dean shrugs, abashed. “Wanna see you, is all. To, uh. Be sure it's you.”

That makes something inside of Sam sting so hard that he almost changes his mind, but before he can say as much Dean's back on the bed, on Sam's side this time. He straddles him, high up so he sits on his stomach rather than his crotch, and leans down. His lips press to Sam's almost experimentally, and he smiles against his mouth after they exchange a few careful licks. “Don't worry,” he says, in a low and breathy tone that goes straight to Sam's dick. “This is good.”

The sound of explosions and gunfire from the TV makes Sam's ears ring, then, or maybe it's the kiss, the proximity and the mix of sense memory and this-here-now, Dean so close, the taste and the smell and the weight of him. It's been _so long_ and Sam didn't even know how much he missed this, wanted and needed it. Before his brain can put a stop to it his hands reach out to Dean's fly to touch his cock through his jeans, like so many times before, and that's it.

Dean freezes for a moment but catches himself quickly, glides off Sam in one smooth but unhurried motion and resumes his position next to him, leaning onto the headboard. “Sorry,” he says, knocks the back of his head against the wall in frustration.

“No, I'm sorry. That was dumb, I didn't think.”

“It's okay,” Dean says, then pauses. Sam can see that he wants to say something else, tries to decide if he's going to or not, and waits him out until he exhales and continues. “I get it. The urge hasn't gone away, you know? I still want you, and I still want this, but... _I can't_.”

The last bit comes out as a whisper, and Dean closes his eyes, takes another deep breath.

Sam wants to reach a hand out, offer comfort, but he's not sure it'd be welcome. “You do remember, don't you? How much? Be honest with me, for once, _please_.”

Dean hesitates; not to get the words out but to come up with a lie, Sam's sure, and some tiny, selfish part of him can't help but feel hurt and betrayed. He stomps down on it as he watches his brother struggle with what he does or doesn't want to say. This isn't easy for either them, he reminds himself, and Dean's trying, Sam knows he is.

“I... Yeah. But not much. Bits and pieces, impressions. Fear and pain. Nothing concrete,” he finally says, his eyes begging Sam to run with it, accept it, not pry further.

And Sam doesn't. He reaches out for the stash of candy Dean brought, fishes for a bag of wine gums and the remote. “We got distracted. Lets rewind and have some more fun on that douchebag's expense?”

 

***

 

The professor calls the next morning, while they're out for breakfast. Dean's not the only one who's not really feeling food this morning, he can tell from the way Sam squints at his pancakes. No wonder, they had at most two hours of sleep before Dean woke them both up by screaming himself out of a nightmare.

He fucking _screamed_. 

The ring of Dean's cell startles them both, and it takes him a moment to pat himself down and find it. “Yeah?”

“Professor Collins here. Bobby Singer gave me this number. Dean?”

“The one and only,” Dean replies and mouths _prof_ at Sam, who leans forward so they can both listen without having to use speakerphone. What the guy's got to say might not be intended for the general public in a busy diner.

“Good. I found out more about that cross, like you wanted me to. Turns out, it's got a colorful history, and a name. Telum amoris, or Amor's Speer in German. It was long believed to be lost, but that happens when pieces like that get snatched away by private collectors. Impressing find you made there, and quite the legend surrounding it.”

Dean's not so impressed by something that killed more than a dozen people simply by existing, however old and legendary it might be. “Okay, so what about it? What's the legend?”

“That cross is old, but you already know that from the essay. Its real origin is unknown, but its history gets interesting in the late thirteenth century. Legend has it that a witch who's been brought up as a servant in the monastery church of Rungholt in North Frisia cursed it to take vengeance on the church's staff. They made her childhood a living hell, causing her to turn her back on Christianity once she got out. She entered a coven as a young adult, studied heresies and dark magic, became a rich and powerful witch. When she felt sickness coming on and her life draw to an end, she bought the cross, put a curse on it, and gifted it to the church. The legend says that everyone who touched the cross was to die unless they'd be, well, penetrated within twenty-four hours.” The professor breaks off and clears his throat uncomfortably.

That doesn't quite make sense to Dean, has him imagining spears and swords, and the look Sam throws him confirms that he's at a loss, too. “Wait, penetrated? Isn't that usually deadly anyway?”

There's a cough on the other end of the line. “Not, ah. That kind of penetration. I mean, you know. Coitus.”

Sam makes a face at Dean to imply exactly how much of an old-fashioned prude the prof is. “As in, sex? That's, uhm. Imaginative,” he says.

Now that they sailed around that cliff, the professor gets more talkative again. “It is, in fact. The monks didn't know how they'd survive the curse. They were unlikely to engage in sexual intercourse, and even if they did it wasn't usually with, well, each other. Some interpretations say that the witch herself has been the victim of assaults of the kind and that that's why she chose a curse involving it, but I'm not sure about that. See, if we assume those monks were actually celibate, it's doomed if you do and doomed if you don't: even if they somehow found out about the way to survive the curse, they would have to engage in sodomy to live, which was a sin that made sure they'd go to Hell. Die or give up the purity of their mortal soul. So it _is_ quite imaginative, if you ask me. But anyway, Rungholt sunk in the late fourteenth century, got swallowed by the sea in what history calls the Grotte Mandranke, everything about it became even more of a myth and so did the cross. There were reports that it had been found early last century, but it disappeared again shortly after. Now we know where to, I guess.”

Dean still can't find that fascinating. “Okay, anything else we should know, not about the history of the cross but the curse itself, the magic it's been created with?”

“No, sorry. I'm well-versed in the topic of medieval dark magic, if I do say so myself, but even I don't know how to lift a curse that's been cast eight-hundred years ago. Make sure you don't touch it when you get it, and you should fine.”

 _Should be fine_. Wonderful. Dean thanks the professor for his effort and flips the phone shut.

Sam shrugs. “So that's why the last owner of the cross before the unfortunate Mr. Cramer survived. She was married, and apparently it had been a happy marriage with a healthy sex life. Same goes for the assistant, Ashley, if she touched it.”

“Yeah, didn't you say she was engaged? Even if she caught the curse, she went home, got boned by her finance, problem solved.” Some other time, before Hell, Dean would've had a blast with that: in a reversal of the plot of half the horror movies he ever saw, where sex is the express way to getting yourself killed, this time it's the only one way to stay alive.

“Yep,” Sam agrees. “And it doesn't matter whether or not Mr. Cramer took his wife to bed every night, because he was the one doing the penetrating. That leaves us with the question how we manage to snatch the cross out of a private gallery with heavy-duty security.”

That's a problem, indeed. All experience with breaking and entering aside, they're not spies or master thieves and a security system like in the mansion is much too rich for their blood. Time to be sneaky, dig out the monkey suits again and play some more charade. “I might have an idea about that.”

 

***

Dean's idea is as simple as it is effective. They drive back to the motel, dress up, spend half an hour in a copy shop in town, and before noon they're back at Mr. Cramer's house with grave expressions and a fake warrant.

Ashley opens the door, looks surprised to see them again. “Oh, agents. What can I do for you?”

“We have bad news,” Dean says, avoids her outstretched hand for effect, and Sam has to suppress a grin at how earnest a face he makes. “The cross might be contaminated, we need to confiscate it.”

She takes a step back, wipes her hand on her skirt. “Contaminated?”

“Yes,” Sam answers. “A virus, killed the last owner too. You wouldn't happen to feel any dizziness lately, or nausea, rapid heartbeat, that kinda thing?”

“No, nothing. I feel fine,” Ashley says, her faces turned ashen. “I had weird dreams, kinda trippy, but I'm not sure that's relevant? How contagious is it? Do I have to worry?”

Dean throws him a look that says, hey, told you she caught it, and then smiles at her reassuringly. “Not very. The contamination took place a while ago, and if you don't have any symptoms yet you might be over the worst. But we have to be sure. For your own safety, you understand?”

“Yes, yes. Sure.” She opens the door wider to let them in, heads off in the direction of the gallery, and they follow her. Once there, she pulls out a key ring and unlocks the glass case of the cross. Dean pulls a pair of latex gloves out of his pockets and carefully lifts the cross off its stand. 

“Thanks,” Sam says over his shoulder as he follows his brother back down the hallway. “We'll find our way out. Our office will send you the paperwork about the cross's whereabouts, and we'll notify you if you can claim it back.”

They leave her standing in the gallery, hurry to get out of the house in case she changes her mind, wants to see the warrant again, call their supervisor or the like.

“Well, that was easy,” Dean says as he bends over the hood to put the cross in the curse box. He looks up, face lit up in a way Sam hasn't seen much of since hell. “Object secured, day saved. Hey, let's go to that steakhouse in midtown to celebrate before we hit the road? Delafield's finest, it says in the flyer, can't miss out on that.”

“I'm not gonna argue with the flyer.”

“Awesome.” Dean throws the hood shut, loosens his tie. He pulls off the first of his gloves and stuffs it back into his pocket when he rounds the car to get into the driver's seat, digs for the keys with the newly glove-free hand, unlocks the car and leans over the roof while he drags the second one loose. “Honestly, lethal curses aside, I kinda like this town. We should come back here some time, check out the rest of these restaurants and – _Fuck._.”

He hadn't been paying attention to Dean's rambling, busy shedding out of his jacket and getting rid of his own tie, but now Sam looks up. Something about the tone of Dean's voice makes his blood go cold, his heart beat faster. “What's wrong?”

“The glove, uh. It's ripped. Underside of the index finger.”

At first Sam doesn't understand what's so bad about that. “Those are disposable articles, they cost a few cents each, we have a whole box of them in the backseat –“

“No, Sam. You don't _get it_ ,” Dean snarls, sounding like he's on the verge of panic. “The glove I held the cross with. It's ripped wide open on the underside of my finger.”

That still doesn't sink in for a second or two, but then Sam catches up. “You touched the cross.”

 

***

 

Sam keeps pacing back and forth through the room, and Dean gets that it's a coping mechanism and that he's burning off adrenaline or some shit, but it drives him crazy. “Sit the fuck down.”

“What?”

“Stop pacing about and sit. The fuck. Down. You're makin' me nervous, which isn't necessary cause I'm goddamned ready to crawl up a wall as it is.”

The look Sam sends him his confused and more than a little aggravated, but he obeys, sits down on the bed opposite Dean's, runs a hand through his hair and then down his face. “You sure you don't remember if the glove was already torn, or if maybe you cut it on the key afterwards?”

“Do you really think I'd forget to check the gloves for rips and holes when I'm about to carry a cursed object around that killed fifteen people?” It comes out too loud, maybe a little freaked, but he can't help it. “There was nothing, Sam, and then I took them off and it was ripped. I have no idea when that happened. Dunno how often you need to hear that.”

With a long, exhausted sigh Sam leans back onto his elbows. “Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I'm just trying to figure this out. Maybe it _did_ happen afterward and we don't have to worry – “

Dean closes his eyes, to make it easier to ignore Sam's words for just a second: all he needs is a moment to calm down, shove the fact out of his mind that if this did go south, if he got himself cursed, they'll have to... _Shit._ He takes a long, deep breath, a method that hasn't worked all that well lately to calm him down, but it's worth a try, he guesses. When he opens them again -

 _he's down in the cellar. He doesn't like it here. It smells of dust and mold and half-rotten fish, and it's dark. He hates the dark. Can't sleep when it's so dark. They're coming for him again. He can't see them, but he knows. He can hear their voices, hushed and low and too close. There's a hand creeping up the inside of his thigh and he tries to get up, get away, _run_ , but someone else holds him down as his legs are forced apart. He screams, although he knows no one will hear or even care, he screams until his throat feels raw _ – 

– but he keeps doing it, hears it like a faraway sound but he knows it's him, and it drowns out Sam's voice.

Sam.

Sam's saying his name. Yelling it, in fact, shrill and panicky and like he's scared out of his mind, and it hauls Dean fully back into the here and now. He shuts his mouth, almost surprised that the screaming stops, too. “Wow. Shit. What the fuck.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Sam – who somehow appeared on Dean's bed and bent over him at some point between their conversation about the glove and Dean screeching his head off – says and sits back onto his haunches. His hand hovers over Dean's arm, like he wants to touch but isn't sure he's allowed to, until he finally draws it back. “What was that? What did you see? Hell?”

Of course Sam's mind is gonna jump to that conclusion, assume that Dean's lost it for good and was giving a repeat performance of this morning's concert in hell's major key. God-fucking-dammit, if he survives this he's got to work on his self-control. “No. It was... Some kind of vision. A memory, but not mine.”

“Describe it to me,” Sam demands, more business-like and with less worry and fear threaded through it now that he's got something familiar – something that's off the track in a way they know how to deal with and that's less personal – to grab onto and focus on.

Dean's grateful for that; he himself can be more of a professional about this if he doesn't have his brother looking at him like he's the helpless scream-queen in a cheap horror flick. He concentrates, tries to recall exactly what he saw. “Dunno, a basement? Old stone walls, and it was dark, I didn't see much more. Smelled horrible. The ground felt like wet earth, soil or something. They, uh, touched her and she was freaked out, man. Terrified.”

“She?” Sam asks and yeah, suddenly Dean knows what happened.

He's weirdly calm about it, given the nature of the curse and how afraid he was just a minute or two ago, thinking about what it was he'd have to do to break it. To know it'll happen, it's easier than to fear it might, he remembers that from downstairs. “The witch, I think those were her memories. Guess that answers the question of whether or not I caught the curse.”

Sam nods, as if he'd worked that out already and Dean catching on was just a formality. “Yeah, guess so.” His eyes flicker to Dean's, but he can't hold his gaze, looks down. “So, that means we'll have to, uh. We know what we gotta do to break it, at least, that's a good thing, right? Could be worse.”

Yep, it could be a whole lot worse. A little fucking. Nothing they haven't done a hundred times already, well, _before_. Maybe it'll even be therapeutic, break the ice, whatever.

Dean wants to puke.

He's not aware that Sam's moving next to him, getting up, until he brushes his hip and makes him jump. Sam holds his hands up immediately. “Whoa, hey. Don't worry. Not gonna do anything, just wanna go get my phone.”

“I didn't think you'd –,” Dean starts, but trails off. No, he didn't think that, but he can see where Sam got the impression. Fuck. “Who are you gonna call?”

Sam waits with the answer until he walked over to his jacket, got his cell out and sat back down on his own bed. “Bobby, the prof, anyone who could help us with this.”

“Oh, and while you're at it, you plannin' on giving them a rundown of our nighttime activities for the past ten years or so, too?”

“No. Of course not,” Sam says, all low and calm and _sympathetic_. “Give me a little credit, will you? But you've turned white as chalk and you're back to not even letting me touch you and I know how you look when you're scared. You don't want sex, right now, and if there's any way out of this curse without me having to hurt you...” He pauses, swallows. “Like that, then we're gonna try it.”

Dean doesn't trust his voice enough for a reply, too torn between feeling humiliated about the whole mess and sort of wanting to weep with gratitude, so he just nods and sits by as Sam dials and activates speaker phone.

The mechanical beep of the dial tone fills the otherwise quiet room, but not for long. Bobby picks up at the third ring. “Yeah?”

“Hey? Bobby? It's Sam. Listen, about the case we were on? The curse, that old cross?”

“Don't tell me you jackasses got yerself cursed.”

Dean cringes internally, but Sam doesn't miss a beat. “No, bullshit. But we thought, that thing is pretty lethal, right? We just wanna cover all our bases before we put a loaded gun into storage, so to speak. Any idea of how to lift that kinda curse?”

There's some rustling, the clink of a glass put aside and a sigh; Bobby gearing up for the actual work part of a conversation. “You could track down the person who put the curse on it and convince them to take it back.”

“Yeah, no. That's kinda out of question here, the curse is eight-hundred years old.”

“Huh. You know how to pick the good ones. Doing a counter spell could work, but you'd need specific information about the original spell or you might end up making it worse. Guess that's out too?”

Sam briefly closes his eyes before he answers, but he still isn't deterred. “Not an option.”

“In that case, just make sure it's put away safely and leave it at that. Nothing more you can do. You got the curse box okay?”

“We did, yeah. Thanks.”

“Happy to help.”

They hang up. Sam calls the professor and a handful of Dad's older contacts from the journal next, but Dean doesn't really listen to that.

He makes the mistake of closing his eyes again, zones out because he can count the hours of sleep he's had in the last forty-eight hours on one hand, and gets thrown out of it by a calloused hand on his skin, cold fingers touching body parts he doesn't even possess.

With a yelp, he shoots up to a stand. He trembles all over, with anger and fear both, and he hates it; hates feeling helpless and weak and like prey. The emotions aren't his this time, but they are eerily familiar, hit much too close to home and remind him of everything he tried so hard to bury for the past few weeks.

And he's had it. He needs to get out of here, do something else than to think about and dread the fuck that he's well aware will happen either way; to get a break from Sam's frantic, hushed voice and worried looks and awkward almost-touches. He walks over to his jacket.

Sam looks up when he sees him going for the keys, raises his eyebrows and tells his current dialog partner to hold for a second before he addresses Dean. “Where are you going?”

“Out. Gonna grab us a coffee or something. Won't be long.”

It's obvious Sam disapproves of that, his pinched expression practically screams as much, but he doesn't tell Dean to stay in. What he does say is, “Sure. Call me if anything's up, okay?”

Dean mock-salutes and leaves.

The heat outside is sweltering – he'd forgotten that it's still the middle of the afternoon, could've sworn more hours had passed, his sense for time has already been screwed six ways from Sunday before they took this case – and it's worse in the car, stuffy dead air and the seats are hot to the touch. Sweat starts to run down his back and makes his shirt cling to his skin before he even pulls out of the parking lot, but he relaxes into the familiar rumble of the engine anyway.

She's the one thing that doesn't change, his one constant in a world that keeps rewriting the rules on him ever since he came back.

He finds a diner two streets away from the motel and buys two coffee-to-go, but doesn't head back afterwards. He keeps driving, out of town, through the landscape of waving fields and farmhouses that Sam loves so much, always did, since he was a kid. Dean never got that, but then again, he never was one to appreciate a pretty scenery.

After a while, Dean gets tired again. Both cups are drained, and he should be running on high gear with that much caffeine in his system, but he can barely keep his eyes open. It gets so bad that he has to stop, steer the Impala to the side of the road to wait out the wave of fatigue; he drifts off to the sound of the engine hissing and clicking as it cools, unable to resist the pull of sleep for long.

The visions start immediately. They pick up where they left off, in that basement, those cold hands invading places that she herself didn't dare touch, because it's impure and dirty and bad. Her legs are pried further apart, her skirt roughly pushed up and lifted up to her belly button. The cold from the ground crawls up her spine, and she feels the chilly air on her exposed skin. At the first touch to her private parts, she whines, tries to twist away again, but it's no use. All that does is make the monk who holds her down grip her harder, and it hurts, but not as much as whatever the other one does between her legs. He withdraws his fingers after some time, but she knows better than to think it's over; it's going to get so much worse. Her eyes are tightly shut when he climbs atop of her, she doesn't want to see his face as he shoves inside her.

She doesn't understand how the very same people that taught her how much of a sin it is, allowed only under wedlock and with the intent to conceive a child, can do this to her.

When he starts to move, grunt and moan, she wonders where God is in all this, but she doubts He cares. He didn't protect her when they beat her, and she doesn't count on His help now. The vision changes, then, and Dean finds himself – no, her – in a kitchen he only recognizes as such because she knows that it is. She's bent over a mess of spilled broth next to a fireplace, tries to clean up any trace of it before someone sees, but it's too late. They beat her, with bare hands at first and a cane later, and he feels every slap, every hit, every tear that runs down her face as she cries from the pain.

The generic, overly cheerful ringtone of his phone tears him out of the vision – he didn't get around to changing it to something more his style since he came back, couldn't be bothered – and it's dark out when he opens his eyes. He needs a moment to realize what the noise is and what he's supposed to do with it, switch out of her mindset and back into his.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah? Sam?”

“Where _the fuck_ are you?” Sam's voice is breathless and panicked, and yet he manages to sound pissed off and irritated. “I've been calling you for hours, I have no idea where you are, I thought you were _dead_.”

“Chill out and don't friggin' yell at me. I drove around, fell asleep. Gonna head back now,” Dean says, doesn't wait for a response before he disconnects the call. He curses under his breath, starts the car, puts music on at full volume – to keep himself awake as much as for distraction – and rolls the windows down. The air that streams is cold and humid, it must've rained in the meantime. It reminds him of the cellar, her memories, but he doesn't roll them back up.

Despite the music and the fresh air, he almost drives the car off the road twice and narrowly avoids wrapping it around a tree, but he gets back without having to stop again. Sam greets him with a glare, but he seems to remember the peril Dean's in as soon as he actually catches sight of him.

His expression softens. “You alright?”

“Except for the dreams where I'm a little girl, you mean? I'm peachy.” Dean's been aiming for sarcastic, but the tone that comes out in is a lot closer to whiny and pathetic. He's just _so tired_. “Did you find anything, another way to break the curse?”

Sam averts his eyes. “No. I'm still digging through some stuff, but... Dean, I don't think there's an alternative here.”

Of course there isn't. Dean should've known that, and he didn't allow himself any real hope, but to hear Sam say it is still a kick in the gut.

“I'm gonna keep looking anyway,” Sam backpedals. “Okay? There's still some time left, we can wait a couple more hours.“

Dean balls his hands into fists, barely resists the urge to punch a hole into the wall next to the door in frustration. He wonders what'd happen if they let the curse play out and he dies. Maybe that angel-guy, Castiel, would bring him back, no harm done.

But it's just as likely that he gets thrown back into the Pit, and he decides he's not willing to risk _that_ , so he shakes his head. “No. We won't. There is no other solution. Let's accept that and get this show on the road.”

Because he might not look forward to it, but he wants this to be _over_. He smells that nauseating cocktail of incense and mildew and men that haven't showered or taken a bath in way too long and reek of week-old sweat and dirt all the time, now. Whenever he closes his eyes, he's back in that basement, that kitchen, or on some sort of bed made out of litter and barely covered by threadbare, woven fabric. He can _feel_ the cold, damp earth on the underside of his naked thighs or the straws of litter that poke into the same spot on his back on every thrust, and he's so, so afraid, feels small and lost and – most of all – alone. _She does_ , and he's decided he'd take memories of pain and mutilated bodies and demons doing things with him he doesn't even have words for over that any day. He's used to hell replaying in his mind, plain and simple. Lived through it, got out. It was more horrid than words can say and it's going to haunt him for the rest of his life, but it's in the past.

This isn't, far from it, the worst is yet to come. But it's true what they say: sometimes the only way out is through.

 

***

 

Sam wants to protest and insist that he hasn't exhausted all options yet, gotta keep up the research and try harder, but... This isn't his decision to make. Not really. If Dean wants this done now, doesn't want to wait any longer, then that's what they'll do.

They stand in front of each other for a few moments, awkwardly, neither knowing how to proceed from here. Dean sucks in his lower lip, chews on it, then turns the other way. Sam watches the rigid line of his back and waits while Dean shrugs out of his jacket and walks over to the wardrobe to hang it up. Back still to Sam, he gets rid of his shirt, too, and it isn't until he pulls his t-shirt over his head that the thought of following his example occurs to Sam. They get naked fast and mechanically, faced away from each other.

Dean turns back around when he's done, eyes pointedly fixed to a point on the wall somewhere left of Sam's head. He takes in a breath. “Bed?”

“Uhm, okay. Yeah,” Sam replies, but doesn't start for it until Dean waves a hand at him to go ahead  
already. He picks the bottle of lube he still keeps in his duffle – mostly for the purpose of whacking off, these days – and a condom up along the way.

Before he joins him on the bed, Dean switches off the light, and it leaves Sam confused. “Why'd you do that? I thought it's easier when you can see me?”

“It is, when I have a say in it. But not now, not when it's, uh.” He falls silent and grimaces, but Sam gets it anyway. Dean doesn't want to look into his face when it's _forced_ ; doesn't want to see him when what's about to happen is another violation.

Bile rises in Sam's throat, bitter and acidic, and he has to swallow a few times to keep it down. He's never going to get this done. He won't be able to get it up in the first place, let alone stay hard to follow through.

The mattress dips with Dean's weight; he sits on the edge of it for a few beats. “I'm not gonna blame this on you. It's not your fault, and I know you're not any more keen on it than I am. You tried to get me out of it, and I appreciate that.”

Sam knows he means that, but he'd have a much easier time accepting Dean's absolution if his voice wasn't so toneless, restrained and carefully devoid of emotion. He's given in, checked out, operating on autopilot to get through this, and Sam wants to cry, half-buries his face in his pillow, determined not to let that show.

When he doesn't get a reply, Dean lowers himself down next to Sam. He strokes a hand down the side of Sam's face that's still accessible and not smothered in fabric, gently pulls it upwards, forcing Sam to look at him. “Sam, hey. Seriously. It's fine.”

It's anything _but_ fine, and what's worse is that, once again, Dean tries to calm Sam down although he's the one who'd need comfort and reassurance. And Sam's not going to have it.

“Shut up,” he whispers; there's a lot more he wants to say, but he doesn't trust his voice to hit the right note. Instead, he leans forwards, presses a kiss to Dean's lips but withdraws before Dean can deepen it. He doesn't want it to be part of what happens next, taint yet another thing between them.

He pushes at Dean until he gets what Sam wants and turns around. Dean's breath hitches when he puts a hand to the small of his back, and it answers the question of whether or not Sam's going to try and go slow, ease him into this; the more Sam'll touch him, the more he'll draw it out, the worse it's going to be for Dean. This isn't about making it good and trying to make Dean comfortable, because whatever Sam does, he won't enjoy it. Not like this.

Sam still feels like an ass when he bypasses any sort of foreplay, rolls around to get the lube, squeezes a generous amount on his fingers and lets them wander further down. Dean shifts, spreads his legs enough to allow him access, but he nevertheless flinches when Sam first touches the rim of his hole.

“Shh.” Sam stills, debates whether he should withdraw, but Dean reaches a hand out behind himself and takes hold of Sam's arm.

“Go on. Don't stop. Just get it over with,” he demands.

“I don't want to hurt you.”

“Okay, newsflash,” Dean says, but lets go of Sam's arm. He sounds like Sam feels, agitated and nervous. “I don't want this, it's going to hurt either way, so please _hurry up_.”

A tremor runs through Dean's body when Sam pushes a finger in, slowly and careful, and moves it around. He's tense all over, muscles locked and frozen in fear, and yeah, Dean's right; there's no way this isn't going to hurt him unless he manages to relax, and Sam knows that he won't be able to.

As if Sam needed another reason to not want to do this.

He goes through the motions anyway, preps Dean extensively, adds a second finger and a third and does everything he can to work him open. It doesn't help that they haven't done this in so long; Dean's body isn't used to it anymore. 

Sam scissors his fingers, about to feel for Dean's sweet spot by habit, but he stops dead when Dean's hand flies backwards again, this time to stop him.

“Don't! Fuckin' _don't_.”

Although he doesn't get it, Sam stops the movement of his fingers inside of Dean's body, no idea what he's done wrong. “What?”

“Quit that. Don't try to....” Dean trails off, draws in another shaky breath. “To make me come. That'll only make it worse.”

So much for remembering nothing more than _bits and pieces_. Those don't enable someone to distinguish between bad and worse; to Sam's ears, that sounds like a concrete memory, the full set, not just a flickering impression as Dean continues to insist. But he doesn't have the capacity to think about the implications of it now, because he realizes that – unlike Dean – he'll need to get hard enough to perform, and he's got to pass that information on to his still limp cock.

Sam closes his eyes. He imagines the very first time they did this, when he was barely more than a teenager. He remembers their first time after Stanford, frantic and desperate in the back of the car, and the last before Dean went to hell. Dean used to be enthusiastic and vocal, moan and edge him on, swivel his hips to fuck himself on Sam's fingers or cock, never shy to tell Sam exactly what he wanted and how and when. There's a whole gallery of mental images Sam has stored away for safekeeping, and he tries to conjure them up now. Head pressed to Dean's back, to at least be able to breathe him in, Sam withdraws his hand and starts to stroke himself.

It works, at least until Sam puts on the condom, lines up to push in and Dean gives a low whine at the contact. He catches himself almost immediately, whispers an apology that Sam really doesn't want to hear – nothing to apologize _for_ , Dean's not the one who should be begging for forgiveness right now.

When he does shove in – in one long, slow thrust, a hand on Dean's hip to steady him, though Sam's not sure if that's making things better or worse – Dean hisses in pain, and that's it. Sam's hard-on dies on him before he can bottom out. The tight heat of Dean's body and the sense memory stored away from so many other nights isn't enough to distract him from the fact that he's hurting Dean, in more way than one.

Of course, having to do it all over again only serves to hurt him more, not less. The second time Sam drives into him Dean doesn't so much hiss as outright yelp, tied up in knots even worse after the first attempt. He's panting and out of the corner of his eye Sam sees him clenching and unclenching the fist that rests on his flank. Before he can think twice, Sam removes his hand from Dean's hip to reach for it, untangles Dean's fingers and entwines them with his own. Dean tries to get his hand free at first, but presses down hard when Sam starts to move, shallow thrusts that are meant to give him just enough friction to end this quickly. He leans in to whisper soothing nonsense at him, “shhh,” and, “it's okay,” and, “it's me,” and “I promise it'll be over soon.”

Dean doesn't reply. He's beyond talking, lies stock-still, his only reaction the pressure on Sam's hand that lets up and intensifies in rhythm with Sam's thrusts.

It feels like an eternity passes before Sam feels his orgasm build, and he never found the word _release_ more fitting; there's hardly any pleasure in it, purely physical, his body performing a deed. As soon as he's done coming, he pulls out, and inches backward to give Dean room.

“You okay?”

He gets no answer. Dean's moved from his side onto his stomach, curled in on himself; he's not crying as far as Sam can tell, but the quick, measured pants he's still making – panicked and hurt and sounding like a freaked-out animal – are almost worse.

Sam gets up and goes to the bathroom to get rid of the condom and clean himself up. He brings a wet washcloth for Dean but decides it's not a good idea to touch Dean that intimately right now, just lies back down and gathers him in. Dean resists, but Sam doesn't let up. He makes him roll over so he faces Sam, but his eyes are screwed shut.

“Hey, Dean, look at me,” Sam says. “Open your eyes, _look at me_.”

Dean blinks, as if he's surprised to see him, and yeah, that's what Sam thought.

“It's me, Sam. The real deal, the genuine article, topside. You're okay. It's over, and you're safe now.” He keeps talking – a constant stream of words – until recognition dawns on Dean's face and he exhales, relaxes visibly.

Sam tries again. "Dean, do you think... The curse. Still seeing things? The girl, the basement?"

Before he answers, Dean extricates himself from Sam and sits up. He takes a long look around the room, sniffs experimentally, closes his eyes and opens them again. "I think? Vision's gone, at least."

"Okay, good. That's good. How are you, you know, other than that? Can I –" 

Dean rolls his eyes, then inches down and turns over, his back to Sam. "You can leave me the fuck alone, yeah." 

 

***

 

The first thing Dean does when Sam's finally fallen asleep is to get out of bed – carefully, so that he doesn't rouse him. All that'd accomplish is another round of worry and pity, and Dean can well do without either. 

He stands in the middle of the room for a moment, at a loss of what to do next, how to go from here, naked and too aware of the cooling mess between his legs. That, at least could be worse; Sam used a condom and Dean himself didn't even get hard, so there's no come, and the artificial smells of latex and lube are more prominent than the stink of sex. 

He walks over to the window and opens it to get some fresh air in, anyway, before he goes to take a quick shower – to clean himself up, wash off what happened, stupidly grateful that for once he's able to do that – and climbs into the spare bed, across the room from Sam. That's going to get him another earful in the morning, no doubt, but the thought of sleeping so close to Sam, waking up smothered by him... Not going to happen. Maybe not for a while.

Once he's in bed, Dean switches the tv on at low volume, just so that there's a noise in the room that isn't Sam's breathing. He closes his eyes, opens them, does it again. The vision stays gone, and he can barely remember the moldy smell that made him want to puke just an hour or two ago. 

Small favors; his own set of nightmares will surely be waiting for him when he loses the battle against his own body and falls asleep.


End file.
